London Colney taxi driver Jahid Choudhury had finished a shift and was driving home along Napsbury Lane at 4.30am last night when he saw the large, beige animal sitting by the side of the road.

Shocked, he pulled over and got out his phone: “It wasn’t a domestic cat and I stopped and reversed and it just stared at me.

“I wasn’t scared or anything, but I was shocked, it was very strange.

“It stared and then got up and went into the woods.”

Jahid read about a pawprint trail found in a golf bunker in the Herts Ad last week, but like many had found the evidence unconvincing.

Realising what he had now seen, Jahid went home and called the police. “I have seen lots of big deers and foxes, but this is the wildest animal I have ever seen.”

The legitimacy of big cat sightings around St Albans, Redbourn, Wheathampstead, Welwyn, and Sandridge has divided opinion - and no witness has ever managed to get a picture, until now.

But accounts of sightings have poured in to the Herts Ad over recent months. In January two Oaklands College staff members saw “a large, sandy-coloured cat”, scratch marks were found on a tree after a “huge animal” was seen near Welwyn, and a big “muscled” cat bounded in front of a car across a road near Redbourn.

A Wheathampstead dog-walker recently found the mutilated corpse of a muntjac deer, stripped of meat, and most recently large pawprints were found in an Aldwickbury golf bunker, preserved after a night of rain.

Herts Police have received about 30 big cats reports in the last five years - they advise a safe distance is kept and any sightings are reported on 101.